Executed in 1937.

Although Dalí’s first visit to Hollywood took place in January 1937 at the invitation of Harpo Marx, his fascination with the medium of film began much earlier. Beginning in the late 1920s, he recognized the power and influence of cinema as both a new art form and a subject in itself. In 1934–35, he applied gouache to a magazine portrait of the actress to create Mae West’s Face which May be Used as a Surrealist Apartment, rendering her facial features as components of an interior space. Upon seeing this, the English poet and collector Edward James suggested fabricating a sofa in the shape of her lips, which Dalí produced in 1937–38. This related drawing, Bouche de Mae West, pouvant servir de canapé (1937) which translates to Mae West’s Mouth which may be used as sofa—demonstrates Dalí’s mastery of the medium as he delicately depicts the mouth of the famed actress as a sofa within a spacious interior of a room, its floor beams delineated by perspectival lines. He goes on to portray West’s nose in the guise of a mantlepiece, topped with one of his signature clocks.